430 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
must be made to bend to the habits and instincts of 
the creature upon which both pleasure and profit 
depend, or failure may dog our steps, however pains- 
taking these may be. I well remember visiting the 
apiary of a titled owmer, which, with the advantage 
of modern appliances, and the attention of persons 
of culture, failed to produce results at all equal 
to those obtained by the aforesaid gentleman’s 
tenantry, whose rude methods he was anxious to 
displace. The proprietor, a man of most orderly 
mind, introduced me to his bees, which were 
housed in a line — a straight line of hives, all pre- 
cisely alike in shape, colour, and size, faultlessly 
clean, and arranged upon substantial pedestals with 
stone tops, all of which were accurately equidistant, 
with about 2ft. interspace. The hives, moreover, were 
backed by a very long and very regular wall, which 
formed a side of a painfully methodic kitchen garden, 
and before them ran a path, wearying by its length, 
and as straight as an arrow. When we first caught 
sight of the apiary, it looked like a huge, brown 
caterpillar, each segment of the body of which was 
represented by a stock ; and I saw at once some 
ground for the failure complained of, for, had all been 
devised with an idea of puzzling and confusing the 
poor bees, in order that, so far as their homes were 
concerned, they should not distinguish ‘‘t’other from 
which,” one could have pronounced the arrangement 
perfect. It is obvious enough that a dead similarity, 
not only in hives, but in their surroundings, must 
lead to a good deal of visiting, begetting the excessive 
familiarity which, if not breeding contempt, will lead 
